The price God is willing to pay to redeem His people
is a theme running all through Scripture, from Genesis 3, the story of the Fall
right through to the Book of Revelation. It is a theme which, so far as I know,
has no parallel anywhere in pagan religion, nowhere in secular literature.

I have occasionally made similar statements about
other differences between Biblical religion and secularism or paganism, but have
never gotten together a list of these special characteristics which are true of
the Biblical God but true of no pagan deity or secular philosophy. Biblical
religion is fundamentally, not just
peripherally, different from all other
religions. If you think of any of these differences, please write them down and
give them to me. There are probably over a dozen important and fundamental
differences which we need to get under our belts and make known abroad,
challenging the non-believers to a reasonable discussion. Many of them are quite
common sense, needing no special education, and can be used in our own personal
witnessing.

Our lesson from Isaiah starts off with God telling
His people how much He values them, and of the price His willing to pay for
their freedom and restoration as His own people. "I give
Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you...." God may have been referring to those nations being given to Persia in
exchange for His taking His Israelites back for Himself. Cambyses, son of Cyrus,
had conquered Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba. God was asserting
His power to give and take from the pagan nations as well
as the Israelites.

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Then God calls forth people from all the nations of
the world to have a discussion on who the true God is. God creates a level
playing field, an open arena, into which the witnesses of all the pagan nations
are invited. "Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have
eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears! Let all the nations gather together, and let
the peoples assemble! Let them bring witnesses to justify them, and let them
hear and say, 'It is true...'"

They are being asked to give good reasons for their
believing in their gods and goddesses. God is calling those pagan peoples to
give testimony to the reality of their deities. "Come! Let
us reason together..." from chapter 1 of Isaiah rings out.
He calls the pagans to give their testimony on the subject.

That is another unique aspect of our God, He is
willing to meet with His people on a level playing field. He does not become
less than God in doing so. Rather, all the authority and power of His Godhead
are dedicated to defending that open arena.... so that truth
can be spoken and investigated by His benighted people.

Honest presentation of one's view in a search for the
real truth of the matter is that important to God. Not that God is in search for
truth, He alone knows it all. But
rather, God insists that His people get
into that search for truth, both believers and non-believers. It is in that
contest that truth is spread abroad and attracts those who are interested in the
truth about life. In that process, those who are not truth-seekers and
truth-speakers will be exposed and self-condemned. The one qualification for
entering that arena is that you be willing to engage in that open, honest
contest of viewpoints, and let the truth of the matter prove its own case.
"Come, let us reason together" is the foundation upon which God forms His
covenant relationship with His people. He shows
us why He is the right choice for being our God.

Having invited all the "nations", that is the
goiim, the foreign nations, God turns
to His own people whom He is redeeming from among those pagan people, and says
to them: "You are My
witnesses...., and my servant whom I
have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He.
Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me.... I declared and
saved and proclaimed when here was no strange god
among you; and youare My witnesses."

There was little practice, or even understanding, of
evangelism among the Hebrews of Isaiah's time. Evangelism, such as there was,
was done by God Himself, performing mighty deeds which would astonish the pagans
and draw respect for them, such as defeat them in battle. But here was God
asking His people to evangelize those pagans, many of whom had just had them in
captivity. "Tell them what I have done for you...," says the Lord. "Be witnesses for Me!"
The Lord is telling both the Israelites and the pagans that He, God, had
arranged the triumph of the pagans over Israel, their captivity, and now their
freedom. He was God, He was directing history. (God personally directing history
toward the Kingdom is another unique aspect of Biblical religion.)

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In the Epistle, St. John's theme is overcoming the
world through the testimony of God to us, the reverse direction. John tells us
that, "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and
this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that
overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God."

In Isaiah, God was telling His
people to be witnesses for Him, but here John tells us, "If
we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater:
for this is the witness of God which He hath testified of His Son. He that
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself."

If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then the
witness of Jesus to us concerning the Father is God Himself witnessing to who He
Himself really is, what kind of God He Himself is.

Jesus said that, "No one can come
to me unless the Father who sent me draws him..." (Jn.
6:34) That means that the Father is already speaking to us, even before we meet
Jesus -- perhaps through our conscience and moral sense. In some way the Father
is testifying to us that this person, Jesus, is the Father's son. The Father is
telling us that, "This person, Jesus, is My self-revelation.
If you have seen Him, you have seen Me." That testimony
from the Father ratifies in our minds and hearts that Jesus is from the Father.
Just as Isaiah says (30:20 ff.), "And though the Lord give
you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will
not hide Himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears
shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it....'"
Or, "This is My Son, follow Him."

So we hear words from God through each other, and
from God Himself. As with one's spouse or close friend, we get to know God so
that when we hear something, we often know whether this is from Him or not. This
"fits", or does not "fit". A deep trust relationship develops so that we can
obey quickly and fully. We obey, not like a robot, but with conviction and
trust. "This is the way, walk in it."

St. John, as much as any New Testament writer,
emphasizes the need to receive Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God. God in the
flesh. God assuming human nature. God who empties Himself to become like us.
(Another uniquely Biblical/Christian aspect.) We fallen humans are so trapped in
our tunnel vision, focused on the things of the world, not those of God, that we
could not consistently hear the Father speaking in our hearts and minds. We had
to have Him come in the flesh, eyeball to eyeball, right in the middle of our
tunnel. Jesus came to make God imaginable, to make His love for us imaginable.
He did that by coming and painting a living picture of His love, and in doing
so, drew us into the story line of God Himself.

St. John continues in his epistle, "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and his
life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son
of God hath not life."

People, even some who call themselves Christians,
think this is a narrow minded belief, and that God reaches out to us through
many, if not all, religions. Well, indeed, God will reach out to us in any way
that He finds useful. But that does not change the fact that God is a particular
God, not a generic deity, that God has a particular plan for us, not a generic
pluralistic plan, one size fits all. There is a real difference between right
and wrong.

And most importantly, Jesus is the second persona of
a triune God, who is one God, one being, one "person" in the modern sense of a
unique, self-aware, freewill individual. Jesus is not an avatar of the Great
Cosmos Consciousness, Jesus is the deliberate self-revelation of I AM, Him Who
Is, the most specific and concrete Individual in all existence, who is the
ultimate cause of and explanation for all other existence.

So the only way to have a saving relationship with
Him is to do it with Him. Other religions might have some helpful ideas and
practices. But God is a specific person, not a set of ideas or practices. Not a
state of consciousness. You deal with Him or you are out of luck. The only way
to have a relation with anybody is to
have that relationship through their own self-revelation. You have to relate to
your spouse through his or her body, not that of someone else. It won't work.

That parallel is why the Bible often refers to false
religion as adultery. That makes sense only if God is
personal in that radical (and again, unique) way of the
Bible.

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The Gospel lesson shifts to a particular scene that
evening of the Day of the Resurrection. Doors would often be left open in such
gatherings so that others could come in and join the meal. But the doors were
shut in this case because of their fear of the Jews, that is, the hostile
leaders of the Jews. Jesus appears in their midst. What follows only emphasizes
the personal nature of the relationship between Jesus and the disciples. None of
this would make sense with an avatar of the Cosmic Consciousness because they
all would be potential avatars of that
same Cosmic Consciousness, not about-to-be apostles sent by the unique Son of
God to proclaim Him personally savior of the world. None of the disciples
thought that they too might one day be Jesus, the Son of God, to the world --
except by His personal indwelling Spirit.

Jesus shows them His scarred hands and feet, and the
side wound, again to show His personal identity, not His generic avatarhood.
Jesus then commissions them to be sent just as He had been sent by the Father.

Then Jesus does something which identifies Him with
Him who breathed on the clay of Adam at the first creation of mankind. As the
Church has taught perhaps since the earliest Christians, the appearances of God
among the Hebrews were of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Christ, who
walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, and who appeared at the burning
bush. Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, "Receive ye
the Holy Ghost." That was a clear sign of a return to the
conditions of Eden, the presence of God among His people, probably a preparation
for Pentecost still 49 days away.

Then Jesus repeats a theme which He had introduced
when Peter made his confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living
God. Jesus tells them: "...whosesoever sins ye remit, they
are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained."
The first time appeared to be spoken to Peter, this second
time is to the whole band of disciples -- who are now apostles, sent ones.

The Hebrew tendency to overstate a case to make a
point makes it hard to determine sometimes just what is being said. It would
not, I think, mean an arbitrary authority for the apostles to decide who was and
was not forgiven their sins.

But I think it does mean at least this, that the
community which Jesus was forming among them, to be furthered by the coming of
the Holy Spirit, would be of such spiritual intensity and purity, living in the
light, that persons coming into that community would be convicted of their sins.
The spiritual pressure would force them, just as Jesus forced the Jewish
leaders, either to repent and become part of that community, to flee, or to stay
and work to subvert and undermine the spiritual integrity of that community --
spiritual warfare.

If that community would retain its closeness to the
Lord, the subversion would not work, and would come back on the head of the
subverter.

Those passages were the foundation for the early
Church having public repentance and restoration back into fellowship. They took
sin and forgiveness very seriously, a thing to be renewed in the Church and
among ourselves. We must learn -- with grace and mercy -- to hold each other
accountable for our behavior and attitudes. The administration of such
discipline leading to repentance and restoration is one of the primary gifts of
the Holy Spirit. Small groups are probably the best way to foster that gift,
having a few friends with whom you share that kind of mutual discipleship. That
is a fundamental part of living in the Light of Christ.

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What is God saying to us at St. Luke's this morning?
We have been searching for clues about the nature of our mission, the purpose
for which God has us here together as a part of the Body of Christ. We have
embarked on a study of the Acts of the Apostles as a way of determining more
about our own Acts of St. Luke's, our own response to the Great Commission to
bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to those about us. We especially need to be
looking at the Pentecost experience, partly because many of us have been
disappointed by some of the results of recent attempts to emulate that surge of
spiritual energy and focus in our own time.

What was it that happened to the frightened disciples
to turn them into powerful apostles? What must happen for us here, and
Christians all over the West, to have a similar experience? Why do we Westerners
have such a hard time making an effective witness for Jesus Christ? What is it
about Western culture that neutralizes us so effectively?

There are good answers to these issues. We must take
seriously the call of God on our lives, and take seriously our failures in those
areas. We must trust that God has good answers to our issues, and that He has
good plans for us to grow and mature in our faith and our witness. Our financial
issues, our potential move to the Pavilion, our wondering why we remain so small
-- all these are part of the picture, and part of what God has in mind for us.
He has us right where we need to be to do our intellectual, moral, and spiritual
growing.

I am very pleased and hopeful because we seem to be
looking forward in a positive way to deal with the changes which are coming upon
us. I sense very little of negative feeling, and that we are looking forward.

Just as in Isaiah 43, God is calling us specifically
-- to be His witnesses. And just as in the Epistle, God is telling us that
whosoever is born of God overcomes the world. There is no challenge out there
which we cannot handle in the law and grace of God. And just as in the Gospel
lesson, Jesus is telling us that we are to be apostles, sent ones, with a
powerful and effective message for our people in our time.

We have been delayed in getting our Acts of St.
Luke's study underway. We will begin back at the beginning with the first four
chapters of the book, along with the appropriate chapters in the Acts of the
Apostles for next Sunday.